Matt Chat 50 - Super Episode with Al Lowe

Mon, 02/22/2010 - 10:23am — Matt Barton

Al Lowe, creator of Leisure Suit Larry (and Freddy Pharkas!), chats with Matt this week about comedy in games, focusing on his fabulous work with Sierra On-Line in the 80s and 90s. Note that it's broken into two parts for your inconvenience.
Part I:

Comments

Matt, excellent interview. I've always wanted to know a little bit more about the genius of Al Lowe. The Jazz Musucian/High School band director/teacher/game developer sure is one multitalented individual with a great sense of humor.

Thanks, Mark. He was very easy to interview as I knew he would be from playing his games. He also had a lot of fun during the interview, though we were having webcam and skype issues. It's strange how random SKYPE seems to be when it comes to doing these; sometimes it is crystal clear, and other times it's really blurry and choppy. Doesn't seem to be any pattern to it that I can recognize.

I have an interview planned for tomorrow; hopefully that will work out. I do think I need to take a break from doing these shows, though. The stress from this last episode pushed me nearly to the breaking point, with crash after crash and uploading errors and pretty much everything Murphy could throw at me. The fact that the Space Quest footage is not showing up (it showed up fine in the preview) is just the last straw. I've put a lot of effort into learning Vegas, but the program just hasn't been there for me. I spend more time dealing with random crashes than I do filming and editing. That's just ridiculous. Sadly, Vegas is supposed to be the most stable one out there. IF that's true, I'm amazed that anyone is doing DIY video.

I think the problem may be that I'm working with HD (720). I bet a lot of these issues would go away if I was just doing SD. I've been thinking lately that it might be a good idea. I doubt most people would even notice the difference (my guess is most of them don't bother with the hD versions anyway), and it'd sure as hell speed up the rendering. It takes me 45-50 minutes to render a 10 minute video at the lowest 720 setting, and that's assuming the damn thing doesn't crash at 95% and make me have to start the whole process over. And yes that has happened to me many, many times.

The most depressing thing for me, though, is that I literally spent two days working on the special intro, gathering up so much footage and working out so many techniques to do it. I had the vision in my head, but it took me forever to figure out how to make it happen on the screen. I was very proud of it, but it turned out to be a fiasco. All that work, and the first 6-7 comments amounted to "Epic fail--the intro is 2 minutes long!!" and so on. One guy pretty much called me an incompetent. Here I was, thinking people were going to be blown away, and instead they hated it. It's hard for me to accept that all that work was not only wasted, but actually degraded the show (at least in some people's minds). It's really got me to thinking that I'm putting way, way too much work into these things...That's time I could spend working on a book, the movie, etc. I don't even know why I'm bothering with all this. One guy commented that my channel is "criminally undersubscribed." I don't know what that means, really, but it is obvious that I'm still not getting anywhere near the reactions I get from articles I do than the videos. I could easily write articles like the CRPG history and such in about the same time it takes me to do one of these videos (and get paid for the effort!). Perhaps I need to rethink a few things!

I thought the new intro was a work of art, but I also understand the overly long criticism since 2 minutes for the opening "credits" is longer than some movie openings. That's the catch, though. To do something cool, you need the time, but people don't want that time to be used for something they might consider filler.

One suggestion might be to only use the full length intro occasionally and come up with a shorter version to use regularly. The other possibility is to use a brief intro and make your Episode 50 intro your show's outro, perhaps using it as an end credits and "for more information" sequence, plugging AA and the books and what not. I don't know, but whatever the case, it was extremely well done and shouldn't be discarded.

As we've seen with some of the book comments, some people are just asses, so perhaps it's best just to average everything out. Throw out all the 1's and 5's and just worry about what the 2's through 4's say, as those are probably the most reflective of the public at large.

By the way, Matt, you've got to try that Blip.tv link I sent you. It looks like a good way to make a few cents here and there for your videos, but it's primary purpose is to distribute new episodes automatically everywhere (and I do mean everywhere). It saves the hassle of doing it yourself, and it's all free. I signed up for it for Armchair Arcade TV, though I don't know if I'll get full distribution as the quality is not there yet (I need to finish episodes 3 and 4 some time this week).

I got the link, but couldn't figure out what blip.tv was from glancing at the text. I guess I need to take some time to actually read the article.

I agree about the spastic comments. It never ceases to amaze me how strongly and irrationally some people can react to this stuff. I'm lucky to have avoided the worst, but I've seen other channels where people just rant and rant. I keep wondering why those people even watch the videos if they hate them so much; why bother? I can't imagine taking time out of my day to try to bash somebody's video when it's so easy (effortless, really) just to go to another channel or watch somebody else's video. I guess some people just get off on that.

I don't know. If you put yourself out there, you're open to criticism good or bad. I feel sorry for the kid, though. I wonder what's wrong with her? I hope psychologically doing these videos is helping her, not hurting/damaging her further.

I'd like to hear Mark's opinion on it, but I don't see anything "wrong" with her, really. Just a girl having a good time. She probably didn't realize her video would get so much negative attention.

When I say "wrong", besides being morbidly obese, which is obvious, I wonder if she has mobility or other issues either the cause of or related to that. Regardless, good for her, as no matter her actual motives or motivation, it takes a lot of guts putting yourself out there in public in any profound capacity like that. On good days, a ridiculously high percentage of people use the power of Internet anonymity to be arseholes in one way or another, let alone on a typical day. Someone has a problem with someone else, no matter who they are, and sometimes just because they feel like it. One of the wicked elements of human nature.